Tag: Chris Pearlman

I had considered holding this back until the morning, and perhaps making a more measured assessment of the situation. But I just want to get it off my chest.

Tonight’s game against Southampton, which we lost 0 – 1 was an appalling display that deserved to end in defeat. Hoofing balls into the box when there’s nobody above 5′ 8″ in a white shirt anywhere near just about sums up where the Swans are at. The Ayew brothers are tricky footballers . . . who seem to exist in their own little world, divorced from the rest of the team.

But let’s talk about the owners, Americans Jason Levien and Steve Kaplan, who see sport as a business like any other, know little about football/soccer and fuck all about Swansea City. All they see is a club in the richest league on earth with lots of money coming in, much of which can be siphoned in their direction.

Jason Levien and Steve Kaplan. Picture courtesy of WalesOnline.

Because beyond buying a controlling interest in a valuable asset I doubt if they have put any money of their own into the club. For example, during the protracted transfer of Gylfi Sigurdsson to Everton last summer the club desperately needed money to sign other players.

But we had to wait until we finally sold our most influential player, the one who’d saved us from relegation the previous season, which didn’t happen until close to the deadline.

We also lost our top scorer, Fernando Llorente.

So who did we replace them with? Well, there was Renato Sanches, on loan from Bayern Munich. That worked out well, didn’t it? Then there was Roque Mesa from Las Palmas, another success. Erwin Mulder from Heerenveen . . . Yes, of course, there was Wilfried Bony, who the fans were glad to see back, but he’s been injured almost the whole season!

Of the players who’ve represented us this season, some have made massive efforts to keep us up. Federico Fernandez comes to mind, he deserved the captain’s armband. But none deserves praise more than Lukasz Fabianski, without whom we’d have been relegated by February.

What can be said in favour of Kaplan and Levien? Well . . . they did a deal with the council over the stadium, leasing it for 37 years at £300,000 a year. A good deal for the council and the council tax payers of Swansea (who’d been subsidising the stadium), but unless they have ambitious alternative uses for the Liberty Stadium it’s a bad deal for a Championship club.

So the Premiership dream is over. It’ll come round again in another thirty years, by which time I’ll be watching the eternal contest between Heaven United and Hell Rovers. (Though I’m not sure who I’ll be supporting.)

So, off you go Jason Levien, Steve Kaplan and Chris Pearlman. Thanks for nothing, you were a complete disaster. You bloodsuckers can sod off pronto.

Huw Jenkins and the rest, we’re all grateful for what you did, Huw, rescuing the club and all that, but in the end you got well paid for it when you sold out to Kaplan and Levien. So your time is up.

Carlos Carvalhal, our manager; you seem a tidy bloke, Carlos, but I’m naive enough to believe that games are won by scoring goals. And next season Swans will need a manager as naive as me. Oh, yes, and goal scorers. You know, players who can place the ball in the opponent’s goal.

The only blameless ones are the fans, the poor buggers for whom relegation would have been hard enough to bear at any time, but for it to happen the same season Cardiff get promoted to the Premier League!

Of course there’ll be crocodile tears from the ‘Welsh’ media, but for most people in Cardiff this is how it should be in Wales, this is the ‘natural order’ of things – Cardiff on top, Swansea playing second fiddle, Newport somewhere below us, then Wrexham, Merthyr, and all the other provincial towns.

Yes, I know, there’s still a remote, mathematical possibility we can stay up if we beat Stoke and Huddersfield lose their last two matches. But do we deserve it? And if we do stay up, with the same people owning and running the club, wouldn’t we just be postponing relegation for another season?

The best thing for the club now, and the city, would be to get relegated, have a major clear-out of owners, board, manager and most of the players, then start afresh next season.